


murphy's law

by double-bubble-discourse-queen (liquidbutteralternative)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Common Cold, Community: mundane_bingo, Dentists, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 01:18:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13225164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liquidbutteralternative/pseuds/double-bubble-discourse-queen
Summary: The worst morning ever bleeds into the worst afternoon ever. Pidge cannot walk by herself.





	murphy's law

**Author's Note:**

> Why write cool whump for a science fiction serious where characters could get blasted by lasers, attacked by alien soldiers, or poisoned by noxious gases after crashing on uninhabitable planets? 
> 
> Why write interesting, innovative whump in a canon scifi setting when you can write bland, everyday inconveniencing whump that takes place pre-canon? 
> 
> The mundane_bingo prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _Too many doctor's appointments!_

Sitting in a dentist’s office, one hand cradling her throbbing jaw and the other cupping tissues around her profusely leaking nose, Pidge thinks this is one of her worst mornings in recent memory. She sniffles ruefully, nose already so chapped it burns. She has no idea how, but this morning she’d woken up with what was shaping to be a hell of a cold. Last night she’d been fine— well no, definitely not fine with her tooth throwing a silent tantrum, but she hadn’t felt sick.

But there's no denying sick is what Pidge is with her ears painfully plugged, a headache coming on fast, and snot streaming down her nostrils. She tries to blow her nose and it accomplishes nothing. Boatloads of mucus remain heavily impacted in her nasal passages and somehow constantly dribbling down. Pidge has to settle for wiping it, every brush of the tissue agitating increasingly tender nostrils.

She’d brought a full box of tissues with her and it’s already nearing empty. Pidge sighs through her mouth and muffles a sneeze into the sodden wad in her hands. She feels disgusting and lethargic. She doesn’t want to do anything but lie in bed, but she can’t put off the dentist any longer. Her schedule’s been busy and she ignored the toothache when it was a minor, off-and-on twinge. Three days ago it flared up something terrible and it’s been a constant beast ever since. The only thing that’s been able to calm it at all is clove oil but of course, that’s just a bandaid.

An itch wriggles through Pidge’s sinuses and she snaps forward, sneezing three times in quick succession. She sniffles miserably and rubs her nose, neither action helping at all to prevent the rivers of mucus. Shortly there are going to be sharp metal tools in her mouth and a virtual stranger getting up close and personal with her. This has got to be the worst time for a cold. Especially such a wet, messy cold.

Pidge sneezes again and internally groans. Just then her pocket buzzes. She slips her phone out, reads the text over. Matt checking in. Pidge has nothing good to report but her brother’s sentiment has lifted her mood a minuscule fraction. Matt had offered to accompany her to the appointment, but she declined. He has classes and he’s already going to miss one so he can pick her up. Their parents are on a well-deserved vacation in the Bahamas and thus, unavailable.

Pidge starts to text a reply when another sneeze sneaks up on her. It’s so sudden and strong, she drops her phone. Another one follows up and Pidge quickly catches it in a tissue. The third soaks the tissue all the way through and she needs another to swab up the mucus pooled in her upper lip. The skin there is getting sore too, agitated by the constant moisture.

An assistant calls her name just then and Pidge nearly misses it because the congestion is so thick in her ears. She picks her phone up and pockets it, plodding to the examination room. The assistant informs her she’ll have to wait a moment and Pidge nods, actually thankful for the period alone so she can blow her nose.

It’s a stuffy trumpet of a blow, the tissues instantly ruined. But it doesn’t relieve Pidge’s sinuses at all. They remain insufferably clogged. She resigns herself to sniffling. She waits about another five minutes and then the dentist walks in.

She’s cheerful and bubbly and Pidge has to plaster on a pleasant smile and sweetly slog through an introduction and small talk she’s too miserable to want. Her nose leaks all the while and she has to stifle a sneeze into a crumbled ball of tissue.

This is when the dentist pauses, frowning as she tips her head.

“Could there be anything in here you’re allergic too, Miss Holt?”

“Ah, sorry.” Pidge is keenly aware of being a biohazard. “It’s a cold.”

“It is that time of year,” she hums sympathetically. “I had one myself last week. I won’t keep you any longer than I have to…” She lifts her clipboard and skims it over. “So it’s been awhile since your last check-up. Have you experienced any pain or sensitivity?”

Pidge gingerly rubs her jaw. “It hurts a little bit in the back.”

This is a grand understatement. Her tooth throbs nonstop, near excruciating. The entire day her cold and her toothache have been in competition for her attention. Pidge wishes she could disqualify both.

“Okay, we’ll check that out.” The dentist comes over and adjusts the seat until Pidge is nearly horizontal. The position loosens up even more mucus and thickens the streams already running from her nose. She gives a weak sniff and wipes it as best he can.

The dentist waits until she’s finished before turning overhead light on. Pidge squints, watery eyes sensitive to the brightness.

“Open wide,” she says.

No sooner does she obey than her nose begins to twitch. Pidge lifts a hand to hold her off and wrenches to the side to sneeze. For a moment she thinks she’s done and then the itch comes back, building up between her eyes until it turns into a fit. When she’s done she mops up the mess, the skin of her nose so raw it burns.

“Bless you…Are you ready to begin?”

She sniffles and nods, lying flat again. The dentist begins with a mirror in one hand and a hateful looking explorer in the other. Pidge can’t do anything but continue sniffling to keep the snot at bay as best she can. This position is definitely not conductive to her efforts.

The explored catches at a couple of her teeth. It’s a tad uncomfortable when it probes into a tacky spot, but isn’t actually painful until it sticks into the side of her painful molar. Pidge can’t help wincing. The dentist places an absorbent cotton on that side of his mouth and nudges at her tooth with the explorer again. Pidge feels the ripple of pain down to the quick and barely bites back a cry.

“This is where it hurts, huh?”

Pidge nods as much as she can, giving another sniffle.

“You have a deep cavity here. It could need a root canal but we’ll know more when we take some x-rays.”

Pidge’s heart drops into her stomach.

“Here,” the dentist continues, probing at one of her upper premolars. “Is a smaller cavity. There’s one here too.” She nudges at the tooth behind.

“And you’ve got one more,” she goes on, and Pidge squints in discomfort when the tacky place is poked again. “Oh, can you feel that?”

Pidge hums a note of acknowledgment that irritates her throat. The cold had been only in her head when she woke but it seems to be spreading down. Her throat is growing sore and there’s a twinge in her chest that signals the onset of a developing cough.

The dentist moves her tongue with the mirror to probe at her teeth some more. “Those three are small. Fillings will fix them up no problem, I’m more concerned about this one.”

The gentle poke at Pidge’s problem tooth feels like a stab right into its pit. She has to blink back tears and wonders if maybe she should’ve been more honest about how painful it was. She swallows it back and nods as the dentist moves away.

“Me too,” she forces out.

Pidge can detect a sympathetic smile in the way the dentist’s eyes glimmer even if she can’t see it behind the paper mask. She offers her some tissues and Pidge swabs her leaky faucet of a nose while the apparatus is pulled into position.

Her tooth protests when she bites down on the tab and she has to do it more than once, losing count of how many x-rays were taken by the time they’re on the screen. If her head wasn’t muddled by her cold, she’d be much more interested in looking at them and placing which tooth was which, or what cavity was where.

As is, she just sniffles pitifully through the dentist’s explanation and scrubs her nose along the back of her shirt sleeve when she runs out of tissues yet again, too put out and tired to care how gross it probably comes across as. If the dentist is offended, she doesn’t say as much.

“We can see how your tooth responds to a temporary filling and take it from there,” she concludes.

Pidge supposes her luck must be looking up, somewhat. This is a better prognosis than a definitive root canal.

She feels a pinch when the dentist gives her the shot of novocain and then that side of her mouth is frozen. Blessedly frozen, the pain that kept her up all night lessened down to a dull, muffled roar. She only feels a slight pressure as the drilling commences.

The dentist has to pause mid-drill when Pidge needs to sneeze, then resumes as Pidge settles again. Phlegm drips down the back of her prickly throat throughout the duration of the procedure, thick and unpleasant. The dormant cough in her chest probably won’t stay dormant much longer. In addition to being sore, there’s a tickle in her throat.

Yep. This is definitely her worst morning in recent memory.

At least it’s almost over.

* * *

 “How did it go?” Matt asks as she flops into the passenger’s seat.

Pidge groans, swiping her arm under her runny nose.

“That bad?”

“Four cavities,” she mutters. “Four.”

Matt sighs, shaking his head. “Sounds like you’re gonna have to start curbing your sweet tooth.”

“No lecture,” Pidge pleads.

“Okay, okay,” he relents easily. “We both know I’m not that great at curbing mine either. When’s your next appointment?”

“Next we...“ PIdge trails off as her nose twitches. Her eyelids flutter and she snaps forward with a harsh sneeze so fast the seatbelt digs into her. She sneezes another two times in quick succession and accepts the napkin her brother fished for her from the glove compartment.

The papery texture is abrasive to her raw nostrils, but her damp sweater sleeve isn’t much better.

“Bless you,” he says, brows narrowing. “Your allergies don’t usually act up this time of year. Were there flowers in the dentist’s office or did you catch a cold?”

“Cold,” Pidge mumbles, crumbling the napkin into a ball and dapping at her nostrils.

“Okay. We’ll go to the pharmacy, you need more clove oil anyway.”

Pidge nods and slumps listlessly in her seat. She zones out during the trip to the pharmacy, staring blankly at the snow falling out the window and trying to ignore the soreness in her throat. She idly flicks at her numb cheek as Matt chatters on about some project. Normally she’d be interested in this too. His projects are always engaging and innovative. But she’s so exhausted and stuffed up, she can barely keep up with the words. Nothing holds more appeal than sleep. She catches a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror and wilts. She looks awful. Her nose is so raw it’s cherry red and the rest of her complexion is a sickly paste white.

Without a doubt one of the worst mornings ever, let alone in recent memory.

The pharmacy’s parking lot hasn’t been shoveled yet. Cars are packed together like soda cans and there’s no where to go except way in the back.

“I know you feel crappy,” he tells her sadly. “I wish I could let you wait in the car but I don’t trust this neighborhood.”

“Please,” she whines. “Come on, I’ll lock the doors. It’s broad daylight.”

“No,” he insists. “A lot of sketchy people hang out around here. Mom would kill me if I left you alone.”

“What Mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

Matt vigorously shakes his head. “Mom’s not like Dad. She knows all.”

“Ugh, fine.” Even just about every level of done she could be, Pidge won’t leave him to their mother’s wrath. In all actuality, Colleen Holt did possess some force of awareness that seemingly couldn’t be explained by science alone.

They speed walk, bustling at a brisk trot to get in and out of the wind that blasts their faces. The snowflakes frost Pidge’s eyelashes and the wind slaps against her, eyes bleary and watering. Even if they were clear, she wouldn’t notice the pothole.

The pothole is deceptively concealed by the snow.

She trips hard and slams belly first on the ground. The snow barely cushions the fall, breath stolen from her lungs by the force of the solid concrete beneath it.

“Katie!” Matt gasps and hurriedly crouches beside her. “Are you okay?”

Pidge doesn’t answer immediately. It takes a moment for her to catch her breath. She hurts all over from hitting the ground so hard, so fast. And _ooh,_ her ankle. She flexes it experimentally and an immediate pain lances through, like lightning bolts raging up her leg.

“Crap, I think I sprained it,” she hisses through clenched teeth. “Help me up, but go slow.”

Matt obediently helps her stand and putting weight on it is nothing less than excruciating. Pidge clutches tight to her brother’s arm and leans on him contrapposto.

“I take it back,” she groans. “I know I sprained it.”

“You’re just having the worst luck today,” Matt frets, eyes glistening with worry.

The worst morning ever bleeds into the worst afternoon ever. Pidge cannot walk by herself. She depends on her brother’s support the rest of the trek to the pharmacy and when the inside is so packed he has to pull away, she grabs a shopping car. She leans heavily into the shopping cart, babying her ankle as much as possible. She only touches down on the very tips of her toes, painstakingly limping down the aisles. She’s hardly bearing weight on it and knives still stab into her with every step.

“We’re going to the clinic after this,” Matt decides, tone stern like he thinks she might argue. “It’s got to be a pretty bad sprain, you can barely walk.”

Pidge nods urgently in agreement. She doesn’t trust herself to speak. She thinks if she were to try, a squeak of pain would come out instead.

“At least we can get some extra ice packs while we’re here,” Matt says. “You want some cute ones? We don’t have any cute ones at home.”

Pidge nods again and stuffs her face into the crook of her arm as she sneezes again. Matt picks up the softest tissues they have and a big bottle of cold medicine. He knows without her prompting that she likes the berry smoothie flavored cough drops and he picks up two bags even though they’re pricey.

He helps her guide the shopping cart through the foot traffic and picks out a few gel packs shaped like penguins and polar bears. The wait at the register is insufferably long. There are seven people ahead of them and the man directly in front of them has a shopping cart filling to the brim.

Matt opens the tissue box while they’re waiting so Pidge can tend to her flooding nose. She leans forward so her elbows are braced against the cart’s handle. She holds her injured ankle off the ground completely. Matt rubs her back through the grueling ordeal, the seconds dragging on. The line moves increment by increment and all the while she’s sweating bullets.

When they finally make it through checkout, Matt struggles between supporting Pidge and carrying the bags. Deciding to tough it out, she withdraws from his side and her ankle gives way the moment she steps onto the ball of her foot. She nearly falls a second time but Matt moves faster. He rapidly takes her by the arm and steadies her.

“Ow,” she whimpers, grateful the wind can take the blame for her stinging eyes.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Matt soothes, face soft with sympathy. “They’ll give you some painkillers and some RICE pamphlets and I’ll spoil you until Mom and Dad get home.”

Pidge gives him a weak smile. She knows he’s trying to make her feel better but nothing is going right today. The side of her mouth is still numb from the temporary filling, her nose is painfully plugged, and now she’s got a torture of a sprain to deal with on top of it all.

The walk-in clinic isn’t far but the weather makes it a slow drive. Worse still, it’s just as crowded as the pharmacy was, if not more so. Pidge can see through the windows that the padded chairs lining the waiting room walls are filled with people. The parking lot is just as packed as the one at the pharmacy too. She groans and sinks down into the passenger’s seat.

Matt lets out a weary sigh. “Do you think you can walk if I drop you off right at the door?”

“I think so.” Pidge bites her lip.

Matt pulls the car around to the front and Pidge opens the passenger door, swinging her legs out. She experimentally tests her bad ankle, holding the seat in a white-knuckled grip.

“Ooh,” she hisses. “Maybe not.”

To her surprise, Matt gets out of the car. He hurries around and crouches in front of her.

“Piggyback,” he says simply.

“No!” Pidge shakes her head, mortified.

“Yes,” he insists. “It’ll be just like when we were little kids.”

“People will stare!”

“They’re stupid people.”

Pidge gives in and climbs on her brother’s back. Matt secures her legs around his waist and takes her inside, sure enough to the stares of the many people in the office. He gently lowers her into one of the last available chairs and runs back out to park the car.

Pidge sighs, scrunching into her seat. It’s right up against the window. A chill comes in through the glass, making her shiver in her coat. She glances around the office, her gaze sliding over the other people in here. Most of them look sick with glassy eyes and red, drippy noses just like hers. There’s a child in the chair next to her with raspy breath.

He starts coughing and his mother must be too tired to remind him of his manners because he doesn’t cover his mouth. Pidge isn’t worried about catching anything, naturally: she’s already sick. But she doesn’t want Matt to get sick.

There’s always a chance he’d catch the cold from her, but this petri dish of a place pretty much makes it a guarantee he’s going to catch something. Pidge feels slightly guilty for being the reason to come here. Then again, the reason she fell in the first place was because Matt wouldn’t let her wait in the car.

She’s a little miffed about that, actually. She doesn’t quite blame him but she isn’t above reminding him why she fell if it means extra pampering until her sprain heals.

He comes from parking the car and shakes the snow off his shoulders before glancing to the line at the desk.

“Do you want me to do your paperwork?” he asks quietly.

Pidge nods.

Doing her own paperwork means she has to make herself put a checkmark in the “male” box where it asks for her sex. Hormone blockers mean she passes— passes so well in fact, that the last time she needed a clinic visit, they’d asked if she made a mistake on the paperwork.

A loving, supportive family has encouraged Pidge to feel pride in being trans and most of the time she can. The blockers and the donning of a different, natural feeling name have done wonders to diminish her gender dysphoria. But she’s not fully comfortable discussing her identity with strangers. At best it feels awkward and at worst it feels unsafe. Sure, these are medical professionals, but they’re still strangers.

She’d prefer to see her primary physician, whom she knows and trusts. It’s truly a testament to how much pain she’s in that she’s sacrificing familiarity for immediate treatment. At the thought she glances down to her injured ankle and gives it a cursory flex. Pain throttles up her entire leg and Pidge resolves not to do it again.

Matt comes back with a clipboard and starts filling out her information, claiming the seat next to hers.

“Thanks,” Pidge says.

“No prob.” Matt flashes her a small smile. “I’ll tell you if there’s something I get stuck on, but I think I know all of this.”

Pidge opens her mouth to speak, stopped short as an itch tears through her sinuses. Her breath hitches and a sneeze launches free, sticky threads of mucus dangling off her nostrils. Matt quickly pulls some tissues out of his pocket. Pidge blots them against her nose, sniffling thickly.

She sneezes and sniffles through the duration of their wait. A children’s movie she’s unfamiliar with plays on the television in the corner of the ceiling and she pays attention to snippets of it, in between messing around on her phone and tending to the mess of her cold. Matt invests himself in a magazine, knowing his sister doesn’t feel up to conversation.

An hour crawls by like a snail on the sidewalk, all the people here before her getting called back one by one. The urge to cough is coming on stronger. Her chest grows leaden with the increasing congestion. She can feel the transition in the crackling that accompanies her breath.

She ends up stuffing some small, choked coughs into her shoulder. Matt takes note and rubs her back. He kneads his hand between her shoulder blades in circular motions just like their father does. It comforts her but at the same time it makes her miss their parents with this sudden, unexpected longing.

“Poor Pidge,” Matt murmurs, his voice honeyed with concern. “You know I don’t believe in luck, good or bad. But the kind of day you’re having could almost convince me the bad kind exists.”

“I’d say it’s pretty solid evidence,” Pidge mutters, not bothering to hide how miserable she feels.

Worry darkens her brother’s features. He knows she has a high pain tolerance. She’s always been sensitive emotionally. Teasing jeers spat from bullies’ mouths never fail to cut her. The kids at school are only ever friendly during group projects in science class, when they want her for a partner just to get them a good grade only to immediately drop her afterward. When they aren’t mocking her, they’re excluding her, and when they aren’t excluding her, they’re targeting her. Teachers don’t do a thing because they think she’s a disruptive know-it-all.

Emotionally Pidge is vulnerable, but physically? She’s always had a strong pain tolerance. Scraped knees and bloody noses never bothered her one bit as a child. When they were younger, she constantly dragged Matt into wrestling matches and never whined about a single bump, bruise, or rug burn. She didn’t bat an eye at any needles on her progression from booster shots to hormone blockers.

Pain doesn’t get to Pidge easily. If she’s hurting, it’s because she’s truly hurt and Matt knows that just as much as she does.

When they finally, finally call her back, the nurse wants her to step on the scale.

“She,” Matt starts, subtly emphasizing the pronoun just in case, “can’t do that. She can’t put any weight on her ankle.”

“I think I weigh 105,” Pidge offers with a tired cough.

“Okay.” The nurse jots it down and then ushers them into an exam room.

Matt lifts her up and places her on the table, saving Pidge the trouble of trying to clamber on it while babying her leg. The nurse leaves and a few minutes later the doctor replaces her, flipping through Pidge’s paperwork.

“So you suffered a fall in a parking lot today, correct?”

Pidge sniffles as she nods.

“Alright. Let’s take a look.” The doctor scoots closer on his stool and takes Pidge’s winter boot in his hands.

She can’t resist a wince, grimacing.

The doctor purses his lips. “I’ll try to be gentle, but I need to take it off to examine you.”

“Yeah,” Pidge says, breathy. “I know. Just get it over with.”

Matt stands beside the table, holding one of her hands in the warm grip of his own and placing the other against the small of her back to keep her steady.

Her boot is impossibly tight. The doctor tugs and it won’t come off. Pidge finds it strange because her boots are a size bigger than what she normally wears. She always gets winter boots one size bigger so she can wear extra thick socks. It should slide off with ease.

The doctor adjusts his grip, cupping the heel tightly and firmly grasping the toe. He pulls this time, hard and fast. Burning pain explodes like a firecracker goes off in her foot. Pidge yelps, squeezing Matt’s hand tight. Swelling is somewhat visible through her sock, but the plush material of her thick, wooly winter ones obscures its severity.

None of them are expecting it when the doctor peels the sock off and the ankle balloons. Right at the joint there’s a bulge like a softball, the flesh splotched with deep violet bruises. Her toes are plump meatballs at the end of her foot, her foot as puffy as a startled blowfish.

“Oh, Pidge,” Matt whispers gravely.

Pidge can only gape in shock and horror.

“I think the emergency room is more equipped to handle this than our facility,” the doctor tells them, plain and simple.

Pidge wants to cry.

* * *

The wait in the emergency room is the longest yet but it’s also the most comfortable. Matt doesn’t have to half-drag-half-carry her anymore because she’s quickly given an available wheelchair. A nurse wheels her down to a room with her own space sectioned off by a curtain. She helps her get situated on the bed, propping her ankle up on a modest pile of pillows.

Pidge is given a well earned shot of painkillers and a remote for the television on the wall. There’s a Star Wars marathon on. Small favors. She ices her ankle while she waits, Matt shifting the toweled ice pack every other commercial break.

Her cold has officially taken up residence in her chest. She’s coughing more frequently between the sneezes, hacking up gunk into the fistfuls of tissues after tissues Matt procures from the space on the curtain’s other side once they run out of the ones purchased at the pharmacy.

“I hope I don’t get you sick,” she sighs, chest audibly crackling.

“I’m more worried about you than me,” Matt frets. He pats her hand and looks anxiously at her ankle.

“Maybe it isn’t as bad as it looks,” Pidge suggests with a faint flicker of hope. “If it was really bad, they probably wouldn’t make me wait this long, right? It’s been over an hour.”

“I don’t know. They could be waiting for the swelling to go done so they can take better x-rays,” Matt says.

Pidge wipes some of the stream from her nose with a wad of tissue. “I wish Mom and Dad were here.”

“Me too. I’ll try calling them again in a little bit,” he promises.

Two-thirds through The Last Jedi, Pidge is taken down for x-rays. They reveal not one but two breaks, a metatarsal fracture and a tibia fracture. Pidge’s heart plummets and she finds herself suddenly glad to have a runny nose to blame her sniffling on. She doesn’t want to cry but this is just too much. All day it’s been one hit after the other.

She’s exhausted and sore and sick, and she just wishes this day never happened at all.

“Good news is, you don’t need surgery. But you will need a cast for six to eight weeks.”

“Does she get to pick the color?” Matt asks.

“Of course.”

Matt strokes her hair back and gives her a sad smile. “Well, Katie?”

She sucks her lower lip between her teeth and contemplates for a moment.

“Do you have green?”

* * *

“Why green, anyway?” Matt asks as he works on getting the couch set up for her.

Pidge leans her crutches against the wall, glancing to the cumbersome green cast that encases her leg up to the knee.

“Green suits me.”

“Funny you say so, considering you hate plants.” Matt spreads a comforter over the cushions for extra comfort and fluffs a pair of pillows along the arm of the couch.

“Plants aren’t the only things that are green.” Pidge rolls her eyes and drags her sleeve under her nose again. “Besides, I don't hate every plant. I like cacti.”

“Well your bed’s ready, Cacti Lover.” Matt stands back to admire his handiwork.

Pidge hobbles over and stretches along the couch cushions. Her brother gently elevates her leg on a throw pillow and tucks her favorite quilt around her. The thing is worn and thin with age, but it’s still soft. She nestles in, feeling marginal contentment for the first time since this morning.

A prickling sensation wiggles up her nose, a flurry of sneezes quickly snuffing it out.

“Worst. Day. Ever.” She growls, blowing her nose into the blanket.

“You want some comfort food? We’ve got a couple pieces of cake left.”

“I have four cavities,” Pidge reminds him glumly. “I’m too stuffed up to taste anything too.”

“So no cake, okay…is there anything else I can do?” asks Matt, his forehead crinkling in uncertainty.

He wants to help, Pidge knows. He wants to help so bad. He’s the best big brother she could ask for. He’s a dweeb but he always rises to the occasion and he hates watching her struggle with anything. Matt always knows what to say when the bullies make her cry or when being the odd one out leaves her feeling isolated.

He can’t really do anything about this though. Pidge is stuck in a cast, with a cold, and at least two expensive dentist appointments around the corner. He’ll feel worse if she doesn’t let him try though. It’s just his instinct to help, even when there’s no way he can make it better.

“Stickers,” Pidge suggests because she doesn’t want him to feel helpless. She pulls the blanket up to take another look at her cast.

“Plain green is still boring. If I’m going to be stuck with this for eight weeks, I want to decorate it.”

“You sure its stickers you want? I could make it pop with my fabulous art skills.” Matt grins, a playful twinkle in his eye.

Pidge laughs and suffers with a smile when the laughing makes her cough. 

“No way am I going to spend two months wearing your stupid anime doodles! Go get the stickers!”

“Yes, Princess.” Matt bends in an exaggerated bow. Then he turns around, trotting off to get the stationary box.

They always have stickers in the house. Their mother always puts stickers in scrapbooks, on envelops, in cards, and all forms of mail she sends. Sometimes when she packs Pidge a lunch, she’ll include an index card with some notes and without fail, they’re always stamped with stickers.

Matt returns with the box and sits on the arm of the couch, flipping through the sheets.

“What do we got?”

“Mermaids.”

“Good.”

“Planets.”

“Also good.”

“Emojis.”

“We’re skipping those.”

“Lisa Frank.”

“I’ll take one rainbow horse and a purple dog but other than that, skip.”

“Noted. How about stars?”

“Of course.”

“Last but not least, lions.”

“Lions?" Pidge repeats, a little surprised by that one. 

“Stylized cartoon lions to be specific.” Matt holds up the sticker packet so she can see. 

Slightly clip-art-ish and brightly colored lions prance around the page. They're different. Different, but cute.

"Lions accepted," Pidge decides. 

Matt sets about his work and Pidge directs him now and then when she wants a specific sticker in a specific spot. Bae Bae comes over and sits next to the couch, thankfully within petting distance. The worst possible day ends on the best note the worst possible day could possibly end on.


End file.
